Utah artist Arnold Friberg leaves a legacy of art

Arnold Friberg, a renowned artist who died in Salt Lake City Thursday at age 96, will have his legacy preserved in a museum that will house more than a hundred of his most famous works, including his original of "The Prayer at Valley Forge."

True to the artist's desires, the Utah Cultural Arts Foundation will purchase all of the artwork Friberg possessed at the time of his death for the planned Arnold Friberg Museum of Art. The museum will be at a Utah location that is yet to be determined.

The purchase agreement was signed at Friberg's home on June 21, the same night he fell and broke his hip. His death came Thursday as he recovered from hip replacement at a Salt Lake rehab center.

"We've been working on this for five or six years," said Leon Burrows, chairman of the Utah Cultural Arts Foundation. "I have designs on how he wants to hang the paintings and what he wanted the museum to look like — ideas created by his own hand. He's really been involved with the idea for years and years now."

Burrows has copies of the many sketches Friberg created, detailing how he wanted some of his most famous works displayed.

"He had an unbelievable mind for staging, lighting and arrangement," Burrows said. "It wasn't typical museum lighting he had planned for his paintings, either. He had most everything — all the little details worked out."

The collection will not only include the painting of George Washington in prayer, but also works such as "The Light of Christ," his depiction of Queen Elizabeth II, and pieces celebrating the Canadian Mounties. Also, a major highlight of Friberg's career, his paintings for Cecil B. DeMille's epic film "The Ten Commandments," will eventually be on display, since the foundation will own all of them. The museum also will showcase many pieces that have never been seen by the public.

Burrows said he anticipates the entire collection being cataloged and purchased by this October; however, there are so many pieces that it may take longer.

Although Friberg kept many of his original works, his paintings owned by private individuals are not part of the collection that will be in the foundation's possession. Despite this, Burrows said, board members will work at obtaining as many of Friberg's works as possible and financially feasible, if the owners are willing to sell.

The collection purchased for the future museum does not include Friberg's famous heroic depictions of stories from the Book of Mormon, which are owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.